Welcome to the first newsletter of the new year! All three of the movies in this issue are recent DVD releases; I hope to make it out to the theater some time in the next few weeks to actually review something new! I’ve recently added a great many movies to the short review page, including Death at a Funeral, I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry, The Ultimate Gift, and Whale Rider; if I see a new movie in the near future, its review will probably go there too.

THE WACKNESS: In the first few minutes of The Wackness, we meet Luke, an alienated high-school loser and drug dealer. We also meet his psychiatrist, Dr. Squires, who gives him the good, if not totally original, advice that the unexamined life is not worth living. Lastly, we learn that their relationship is more complicated than most doctor/patient relationships, since Dr. Squires has a drug problem, and Luke pays him in marijuana instead of money. Of course, that the relationship is more complicated than most ends up not being much of a revelation, since these two people are more complicated than most, and we spend the next two hours watching two lives undergo a close examination. Jonathan Levine’s terrific movie is, on one level, just a standard coming-of-age story with a plot very reminiscent of The Graduate, but the setting, the characters, and (above all) some fantastic acting make it unique and satisfying. Josh Peck (from the tiresome Nickelodeon kids’ sitcom Drake and Josh) is much better than I expected him to be. The hangdog expression that he uses for comic effect so much on Drake and Josh suits him perfectly for this role, and serves him (and the viewer) well in a wide variety of situations–depression, irritation, starry-eyed love. Much of the plot revolves around Luke’s first love, who happens to be the psychiatrist’s stepdaughter (Olivia Thrilby), and Dr. Squires’ strained marriage to an aloof middle-class woman (Famke Janssen); both actresses are good, but the key relationship is the odd friendship that develops with surprising plausibility between the two men. In any event, the plot and relationships hold together remarkably well, including some explicit-but-not-exploitative sex scenes that play their role in the plot better than most. If there’s a major problem with the movie, it’s the overly forced emphasis on the setting. This happens to be the first fiction movie I’ve ever seen that is set in the early 1990's. While some of the period feel is right on target (that the story occurs in the Rudy Giuliani era is no accident, and the hip-hop soundtrack with people like the Notorious B. I. G. is perfect), there’s too much of it by the end, and the references to O. J. Simpson, Pearl Jam, N’Sync, and other things that characterize that era get old after a while. In that way, it’s kind of like Mr. Holland’s Opus, another good character study/coming-of-age movie that overemphasized the time in which it was set. As was the case with Mr. Holland’s Opus, however, this is a flaw that can be forgiven, since every other aspect of the movie is such a pleasure. RATING: 8.

MADE OF HONOR: Movies don't have to be wholly original to be good. In fact, almost every movie (or book, or play, or whatever) borrows from works that came before it in one way or another. That said, some originality isn't a bad thing either, and movies that have little or none of it just don't impress me much. Made of Honor is a case in point, because it rips off just about every romantic comedy I've seen in the last twenty years; it's essentially My Best Friend's Wedding with a sex change. The Julia Roberts role in this case is Tom (Patrick Dempsey), a rich-kid womanizer who becomes friends in college (sound familiar?) with Hannah, the one woman who is herself around him (the stunningly gorgeous Michelle Moynahan). She takes a business trip to Scotland and ends up engaged to a manly Scottish hunk (Kevin McKidd from Trainspotting), and then asks Tom to be--get this--her maid of honor (hence the title). Of course, the movie milks this odd plot turn for all its silly humor potential (along with, to be fair, an incisive moment or two).

Surprisingly, neither the unoriginality nor the dumb humor is the movie's worst feature; there's a deeper problem than that. In every romantic comedy I've ever really loved–the aforementioned My Best Friend’s Wedding, When Harry Met Sally, Kissing Jessica Stein, Forget Paris, Much Ado About Nothing, many of Woody Allen's movies--the main characters, while imperfect, were still likable on one level or another. This seems like a basic need, since we have to like the characters to want to see them together in the end. In more recent movies in the same vein, like this one and 27 Dresses, the filmmakers don't even bother with this basic step, and instead create arrogant and even snooty lead characters that don’t hold interest. It's something that makes me wonder if this genre is really made for me anymore. In any event, since the inevitable climactic wedding scene takes place in a beautiful Scottish castle that looks like the famous one next to Loch Ness, those watching this movie are excused if they harbor a secret urge to see the Loch Ness Monster creep out of the muck and eat the whole cast. RATING: 2.

CALLE 54: It seems impossible to make a bad movie about jazz music; Clint Eastwood’s Charlie Parker biopic, Bird, got mixed reviews, but it’s been too long since I’ve seen it for me to be sure I agree. In any event, there’s nothing mixed about my review of Calle 54; it captures the joy of the music it features, Latin jazz, as much as any music documentary I’ve seen since Say Amen, Somebody. The movie defines Latin jazz as music mixing American jazz styles (notably those of bebop artists like Dizzy Gillespie and Thelonious Monk) with Carribean influences like salsa. It also traces its movement from Havana and Puerto Rico, its main birthplaces, via immigrants to New York and then back over the Atlantic to Brazil, Spain, and other places. Legends such as saxophonists Paquito de Rivera and Gato Barbieri are featured prominently. Lesser-known people like Spanish composer Chano Dominguez, who mixes European jazz with bebop influence and tap dancing, and the beautiful Brazilian pianist Elaine Elias are given equal attention. The highlight of the movie, however, is Cuban-American percussionist Tito Puente, a popularizer and an innovator; a long sequence in which Puente and his band perform in a studio is an absolute delight, and captures how much Puente loves making his music. If there’s any problem with the documentary, it’s that there should be more information about the performers and their histories, and more interview footage with them (Barbieri and Puente are the only ones that are interviewed at any length). The main emphasis is on (very well-filmed) studio performances like Puente’s, and they’re all great, but more background on the musicians and their influences, lives, and so on would have really fleshed out the documentary. (The DVD remedies this somewhat by providing text information about each performer in the extras section). In any event, Elias and Dominguez both got at least one enthusiastic new fan from this movie; you may find yourself having similar feelings by the end. RATING: 8.